Page 265 - The Chief Culprit

226 y e Chief Culprit

opinion of Stalin: “In the condition when we are surrounded by enemies, a sudden attack
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from our side, an unanticipated maneuver, quickness, decides everything.” In every gran-
diose process, there is a critical moment, after which events cannot be turned back. For the
Soviet Union, this moment came on June 13, 1941. After this day, war for the Soviet Union
became inevitable, and it was to be in the summer of 1941, regardless of Hitler’s actions.
In the Second Strategic Echelon, which Stalin was secretly transferring to the borders,
there were entire divisions, sometimes even corps, of soldiers dressed in old black uniforms.
ere were enough of these soldiers for the German military intelligence to notice and unof-
ficially dub these divisions and corps “black.” One example was the 69th Rifle Corps of the
20th Army. is corps was not the only one. e 63rd Corps of the 21st Army also figures
in German documents as the “black corps.” e commander of the 63rd Rifle Corps was
Komkor (Corps Commander) L. G. Petrovsky. During the war Komkor Petrovsky fought with
dignity and courage, proving his ability as a great strategist in battle. On July 31, 1941, he
received the rank of lieutenant general and was promoted to command the 21st Army while
the 63rd Rifle Corps, after heavy fighting, was encircled by the enemy. Stalin ordered him
to leave the 63rd Corps encircled and to take command of the 21st Army. Petrovsky asked
to delay the order of entering his post as army commander for a couple days, and the plane
sent for him returned with critically wounded soldiers on board. Petrovsky brought his “black
corps” out of encirclement and once again returned to the rear of the enemy, in order to
bring another division out of encirclement, the 154th Rifle Division (under the command of
Major General. S. Fokanov). During the breakout from encirclement, Petrovsky was fatally
wounded. German troops, upon finding and recognizing Petrovsky’s body on the battlefield,
gave the Soviet general a funeral with all military honors. A huge cross was placed on his
tomb, with an inscription in German that read: “Lieutenant General Petrovsky, commander
of the ‘black corps.’”
e unusual black uniform was noted by the German intelligence in other units of the
Second Strategic Echelon as well. When this uniform dominated over the usual green one,
then regiments, divisions, and sometimes entire corps received the name “black.” e 24th
Army of the Second Strategic Echelon, secretly advancing out of Siberia, was no exception.
During the fighting, several of its corps and divisions got called “black” by the Germans. By
the end of June, the trains of this army stretched across thousands of kilometers. At that time
Lieutenant General S. A. Kalinin, the commander of the army, was already in Moscow, work-
ing on the problem of how to feed the 24th Army. After the first few battles, the 24th Army
found itself in the right hands: Major General of the NKVD Constantin Rakutin took the
command. Lieutenant General S. A. Kalinin returned to Siberia. Kalinin, on Stalin’s orders,
formed ten new divisions. He said: “Units were formed in locations that previously had no
military units at all. I began my work by visiting these locations. My first flight was to one of
the towns in Siberia. Some years before the war, in the dense forests there, a village of barracks
was built for lumberjacks. We used it for housing the units of the forming armies. e village
was surrounded almost from all sides by impenetrable taiga.” Everything about “barrack
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villages for lumberjacks” can be found in the three volumes of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s book
e Gulag Archipelago. e result was that ten new divisions (over 130,000 men) assembled
in the Siberian military district not in locations previously established for military units, but
in “barrack villages.” ese people were the Soviet prisoners. at is why the regiments and
divisions of this army and other armies of the Second Strategic Echelon were clothed in black: